Improvements in patient safety have been among the primary concerns of many efforts in today's healthcare industry. Healthcare associated infections remain a major area of focus for these efforts. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention cites healthcare associated infections in the top ten leading causes of death in the United States. Annually, healthcare associated infections account for an estimated 1.7 million infections in hospitals, 99,000 associated deaths, and 4.5 to 5.7 billion dollars in added patient care costs.
The reduction of healthcare associated infections depends upon awareness and adherence to aseptic technique when handling medical equipment that comes into direct contact with a patient. Medical equipment is constantly threatened by exposure to surrounding contaminated surfaces. These surfaces contain microorganisms (bacteria) which can easily adhere to the surface of medical equipment. Once contaminated, the medical equipment becomes a danger to the patient and can serve as a silent killer. Healthcare institutions use millions of intravenous catheters each year. These catheters are at risk of contamination by a variety of mechanisms. One such mechanism relates to the contamination of the exposed tip of an intravenous administration set. This particular problem arises when an intravenous infusion line is temporarily disconnected from a patient (a process which can occur multiple times per day for an individual patient). During the time that the infusion line is disconnected from the patient, the exposed tip of the intravenous tubing may contact potential contaminants. These contaminants can then lead to infection within a patient's bloodstream once the infusion tubing is reconnected to the patient.
The critical event in the aforementioned circumstance is the failure to retain the sterility of the infusion tubing tip and failure to adequately disinfect the tip in the instance of inadvertent contamination during the time of disconnect from the patient. This risk is, in part, an unanticipated outcome of the somewhat recent implementation of needle-less intravenous systems. Prior to the introduction of these needle-less systems, healthcare practitioners typically replaced the needle used to connect the infusion tubing to the intravenous tubing with a new sterile, capped needle to prevent contamination when the line was hanging between uses. Currently, many practitioners are not actively considering the risk of contamination and are not taking steps to secure the sterility of the exposed tubing. When efforts are made to maintain the sterility of the exposed tubing tip, these efforts are both cumbersome (and therefore at times skipped over), or they fail due to technical shortcomings.
Safe practice recommendations include the use of aseptic technique when handling medical infusion lines. The aseptic technique, as pertains specifically to intravenous catheters, includes covering the exposed end of intravenous tubing used for intermittent infusions with a sterile cap between uses and to disinfect the cap prior to reattachment to a patient. There currently exists a plain sterile cap for intravenous infusion tubing that is individually packaged. These caps have shortcomings which limit their routine use. Specifically, these caps must be opened from their individual wrappers for use. This process itself can place the cap at risk for infection before it is even placed onto the intravenous tubing as it requires significant manipulation by the practitioner. In addition, the practitioner may not have one of the individual wrappers immediately available when needed. Furthermore, these caps do not accomplish any active disinfection of the intravenous tubing tip surface.
Disinfecting the surfaces of medical equipment with alcohol is a well accepted and established practice. Evidence exists supporting the use of a one minute alcohol immersion as adequate disinfectant technique. Current practice often utilizes alcohol cloth swabs to accomplish the task of disinfecting the surface of medial equipment, including intravenous tubing. This method has faults limiting its use. The exposure of the intravenous tubing tip to the cloth swab of alcohol does not qualify as an immersion technique. Also, the practitioner may be very likely to contaminate the tubing tip with their skin which is surrounding the cloth swab as it is being held. Lastly, the alcohol prep pads containing the cloth swabs may not be immediately available for use at the time of greatest need.
The docking station herein disclosed includes a means to temporarily and safely secure the free tip of intravenous tubing (or any other medical infusion line) while simultaneously disinfecting that same tip. In this way, the device and associated method described will adequately provide a means to maintain the sterility of a reusable intravenous administration set (or other medical infusion line) that has been disconnected from a patient until it is ready to be reattached for future use. In addition, the docking station of the present invention further provides a means for ensuring that the device utilized to temporarily store and sterilize the medical line connectors cannot be reused.